West Virginians on D-Day

They say D-Day really began in
1942 when the first American soldier
landed in England for training.

For Pricketts Creek native
Arnold Vincent, D-Day began in
March 1942 when he was drafted,
months after Pearl Harbor was
bombed.

"A lot of people from Marion
County were being drafted," he
says. "They took everybody."

At the time, he was 30 and
working at Alcan Aluminum in
Fairmont.

"I chose the 82nd infantry," he
recalls. He's a spry gent, slight in
build, but always with a twinkle in
his eye.

"I wanted to try the Airborne
because I wanted to try the gliders.
They told me, 'You'll go.' So now
I'm a life member of the 101st
Airborne."

Such a modest statement. He
neglects to add that the 101st is
also known as the Screaming
Eagles, one of two U.S. paratrooper
units to land first on the
Normandy countryside. The other
is the 82nd, All-American.

Beside fighting in Normandy,
Vincent was in the major battles
of Ardennes, Rheinland, Central
Europe. He has received the Good
Conduct Medal, Bronze Star,
Distinguished Unit Badge,
Europe/Africa/Middle East service
ribbon, American Theater service
ribbon and World War II Victory
Ribbon.

He was with the first wave that
landed on Utah Beach.

"God was with me that day," he
says softly. "I never even got
scratched. I just took things as
they came. But I saw hundreds of
boys dying or wounded that day."

Before embarking for England,
he received basic training at Fort
Hayes, Ohio; Camp Claiborne,
La., and Fort Bragg, N.C. He
arrived in England in October
1943, one of more than one million
American G.I.s participating
in Operation Overlord.

"I trained for nine months
before I saw combat," he says.

He became leader of the
machine gun squad of Company
B, 327th Glider Infantry, 101st
Airborne. He would leave the
force in 1945 as a staff sergeant.

"I was stationed at Reading,
England. It was a nice enough
place, if you could dodge the
bombs.

"There were thousands of
Americans over there. The British
loved us. They couldn't do enough
for us. But the people in Holland
appreciated us the most. They
called us their liberators."

The English invited the Yanks
into their homes for dinner, but
Vincent says they were told not to
go.

"They didn't have all that much
food and we were paid a lot more
than they were. Besides, the U.S.
government was giving us everything
we wanted to eat!"

Like most military men, he has a
few tales to tell of his time overseas.

His only Christmas in England
was cold and snowy.

"We'd gotten some turkey for the
holiday and I was starting to eat
mine. I'd gotten me a turkey leg.
Well, it was around midnight and
wouldn't you know it, they started
shelling us.

"I had to drop my holiday turkey
in the snow near my fox hole. The
next day, I remembered it and
decided to eat it. It was frozen, but
did it taste good!"

Although the invasion was to be
a cooperative effort involving several
nations, Vincent and his buddies
trained exclusively with fellow
Americans.

And according to Vincent, the
soldiers knew what was going to
take place.

"They told us what was going to
happen. We took oaths not to tell.

We knew we wouldn't be in
England for long; we knew we were
going to France. "We knew where
but not exactly when. There were
rumors, but no one knew for sure.
Or at least they weren't telling us.

"They had tables set up, models
of the coast of France, made of
sand. They showed us exactly
where we'd land.

"They must have been afraid
someone would go over the hill,
because they had armed guard[s] every
five or six feet. But no one did."

As June 1944 approached, the
men were taken to a staging area,
where huge landing crafts and landing
ships were being loaded with
soldiers, equipment and tanks.
He recalls this with a laugh.
"At the staging area, they fed us
all we could eat. We joked about it,
saying we were being fed for the
slaughter!"

One night, he and his buddies had
a very special visitor.

General Dwight D. Elsenhower,
Supreme Commander of the Allied
Expeditionary Force and later
President of the United States, was
meeting with the men one last time
before they left.

"He shook hands with everybody,
or tried to. He shook my hand. He
was a kind commander."

"We didn't think of coming
home. We knew without a doubt
that God would let us come home."

Activities began stepping up. The
men sensed the something big
they'd been training for was near.

It was.

It was Monday, June 5, 1944. A
storm was whipping the Normandy
coast, churning the English channel.
Allied weather forecasters predicted
the storm would break. Eisenhower
had to decide: to go or stay.

He decided to go.

So Vincent, along with thousands
of other American and Allied soldiers,
shipped out for France. They
were part of the largest armada in
military history, before or since.
They were going to defeat Hitler's
Nazi soldiers.

"I don't remember how long it
took us to cross the channel," he
says. Time, age and happier memories
have blurred some memories
for him and other D-Day veterans.

He and the other 30 or so men in
his machine gun squadron loaded
into the Higgins assault boat that
would take them to Utah Beach.
Utah was the first assault area in the
American sector and formed the
right flank of the invasion area that
swept on east along the coastline of
the Bay of Seine.

Each carried up to 70 pounds or
more of equipment, supplies and
artillery. Many drowned in the
churning waves of the ocean.

Others drowned within sight of the
beaches when their assault boats
sank.

"They dropped the front end of
the assault boat and we marched
into the waves," Vincent recalls. "I
marched smack dab into a shell
hole! Almost went under. The water
was very rough; I almost drowned. I
did lose my gun in the water."

There was "a lot of fighting
going on. The parachuters had gone
in first. There was all kinds of
noise. We got bombed in the water.
Balloons (blimps) were keeping the
German plan[e]s from coming in too
close."

This factory worker got his first
taste of the horrors of war on Utah
Beach.

"There was lost of dead boys
there on the beach, I'm sorry to say.
I never could figure out where we
went to on the beach. We had to
keep a watch out for those German
machine guns.

"We had no real objective, except
to fight. Getting my men to the top
of the ridge was my objective. Men
were falling everywhere. We didn't
lose too many in our outfit.

"We were all trying to survive.
What else could you do? Those
crickets (small metal clickers given
to soldiers) were no good. The
Germans would hear a click and
shoot you."

He's quiet now, gazing out the
picture window of his attractive
home on East Grafton Road. A deer
appears on the ridge across the road,
and he watches her delicately
prance across the field. His wife
Grace watches him silently, knowing
that he's remembering and
needs some time.

"I lost a very good friend, from
Grafton, name of Kirby. He died in
a bayonet fight with a German one
cold night. He's buried in the old
National Cemetery in Grafton."

The ridge he mentioned was only
about half a mile away, but he says
it took him and his men a couple of
hours to reach it.

"We started fanning out then, and
everything broke lose. It was rough.
Tanks had trouble getting from the
ships to the beach, and some sank.
Assault ships were sinking and men
were drowning.

"There was heavy fire and light
fire; machine guns and artillery and
shelling."

By the end of June 6, the 101st
had secured its objective (the beach
exits) but had had 1300 casualties,
with two-thirds of its men scattered
and unaccounted for.

The whir of an occasional car on
the road is the only sound heard in
the room now. Arnold Vincent is
silent, remembering events half a
century ago that have stayed with
him, that will never leave him.
There are no more jokes or smiles;
the awfulness of D-Day is washing
over him once again.

He clears his throat and continues.

"But you know, I made it all the
way through the war without a single
scratch," he says brightly.,
"That's amazing. God was watching
over me, that's the truth. I've never
even had to apply for disability."

He lays a pocket-size New
Testament Bible on the table, its
brown leather cover worn at the
corners, its delicate thin paper yellowing
with age. Tapping it with his
index finger, he says this is what
protected him. Through Normandy.
Through the Bastogne. Through all
of World War II.

"This was given to me by the
pastor of the church I was attending
when I was drafted. I carried it with
me always. And I was given this
prayer, a prayer to St. Joseph."
It reads:

"O, St. Joseph, whose protection
is so efficacious and whose success
before the throne of God is so
prompt, I place in your blessed
hands all my hopes, confidence in
you, all my interests."

At the bottom of the page is
added, "All who carried a copy of
this prayer in the Civil War and
World War I retur[n]ed without
injury."